Balancing Fitness, Work, and Office Distractions
November 12th, 2020
For many of us, work takes up the majority of our days, especially now that so many of us are working from home. Since we’re getting used to spending all our days in one place, it’s easy to forget to stay active. People can get fatigue and exhaustion from not going to more than one place during the day, and experience reduced energy and motivation to exercise.
This is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, living in a sedentary way can cause real and lasting health problems. In a study involving 17,000 Canadians for a period of twelve years, researchers found that excessive time spent sitting was associated with an elevated risk of cardiovascular disease, independent of other factors. This is bad news for Canadians, many of whom report sitting for upwards of eight hours a day. Other health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle include insulin resistance, high cholesterol, and even cancer.
Needless to say, it’s important to get that daily exercise in. But when you’re exhausted after a workday and still have to do housekeeping duties, where do you find time to exercise? The obvious answer is that you can do so during work - but this only works when done properly.
Although sitting all day leads to health problems, standing throughout a work day has its own share of issues. It can lead to fatigue, lower body discomfort, or even swelling. So the solution, then, is to alternate sitting, standing, and moving throughout the day. And here we come across another problem: the problem of staying focused at work.
Having to alternate your physical position throughout the day can add to the distractions that may already be plaguing you while working from home. And research shows us that it can take as much as twenty-three minutes to refocus after being distracted! How can you keep your productivity up while regularly being distracted from your work to change your body position?
This is a problem we’ve been considering at Ergonomyx. As a result, our products have been deliberately designed with the intention of making physical transitions throughout your workday as painless and non-distracting as possible. Our Smart Sit-and-Stand Desk is adjustable, and automatic. Unlike some standing desks that require you to crank it up and down, you don’t even have to look away from your work in order to lift and lower our desk. Furthermore, if you connect your Smart Sit-and-Stand Desk to the Ergonomyx app, you don’t even have to think about when you should alternate positions. Instead, the app will set routines, and do all of the thinking for you, to minimize distractions as much as possible. On top of that, our Smart Under-the-Desk Bike can be pedaled throughout the day while remaining very quiet, to reduce distracting noise.
All of this is designed to allow you to get your exercise in during your workday, and thus leave the end of your days open to maintaining your home life, or simply relaxing and taking some time for your mental health.